


where it all begins

by Naladot



Category: Life with Derek
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Gen, Retrospective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:32:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/Naladot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Maybe she thought if she just held her breath long enough, time would stop and we would never have to leave this summer, never be disappointed, just go on and on having everything exactly as we wanted it to be." Lizzie reflects on Casey, Derek, the family, and their summers at the lakeside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where it all begins

**Author's Note:**

> First person fanfic is usually a disaster, I know. Hopefully this attempt at it works better than most.
> 
> This is somewhat based on Vacation with Derek, but only if you squint really, really hard.

 

 _Can you chase the fire away?_ -"Lakehouse," Of Monsters and Men

 

* * *

 

 

At sunset a haze came over the lake, shrouding the far end from our eyes. It caught the colors of the sunset, dimly orange against the vivid water, where the sun's twin was also dying. When I said as much, I earned only Casey's derisive laugh.

"You don't have to be so morbid, Lizzie," she said, scraping her hair away from her neck. Every night that summer was humid, hot, unrelenting. I was nearly sixteen.

Derek sat on the step below us. I could smell the beer he held in his hand, fiercely reminding me of the days when our father came up here with us—when we were a unit of four, and Casey and I still spoke the same language.

"Everything doesn't have a happy ending, Casey," he said. He didn't turn to look at her when he said it.

I could hear Edwin and Marti in the distance, down by the lake, their dark forms barely distinguishable in the sunset. They were running alongside the water, laughing. I felt disconnected from all of it, caught between the middle of two worlds—though I didn't know it yet.

At the end of the trip I would open the door to the cabin where Casey and Derek were kissing. In seven years Casey would move to the U.S. and we'd hear from her sporadically, whenever was convenient for her. In ten, Derek would be in the passenger seat of a drunk friend's car when it careened down a highway in the middle of the night. His miraculous survival would send him on a worldwide quest he'd never really come back from. In twelve, Edwin would be married, Marti would be working in Korea, and my mother and George would be up here with their shared child, the joy of their middle age.

I looked at Casey. The light shining from inside the cabin cast a long shadow across her face. She fiddled with a ring on her thumb, eyes on the last red sliver of sun. I thought she was trying to think of a comeback, but maybe that wasn't it at all—maybe she saw how things would end, right then, all of our futures laid out against the dusk. Maybe she thought if she just held her breath long enough, time would stop and we would never have to leave this summer, never be disappointed, just go on and on having everything exactly as we wanted it to be.

 

* * *

 

In those days the lake was still pristine. My grandmother owned a row of cabins, relics from the fifties, which today have been torn down and replaced with a lakeside resort. Those cabins were the last of their kind, probably never to be seen again.

We took narrow, winding roads to reach the lakeside. All of us kids had to squeeze into the back seats of the van, until Derek bought a truck and started driving up on his own. I'm surprised he came at all, the way the quiet seemed to grate on him. I rarely saw him without earbuds in his ears that summer, his music audible a few feet away.

There were about fifteen other cabins on the lake. They shared between them a large convocation building, where my grandmother attended revivals as a teenager, as well as an unimpressive pool and a dock full of rickety canoes. I never knew why someone wanted to build a pool so close to the lake, but we swam in it anyway, because the lake was cold and the pool always warm. Debris floated in the pool, tiny little waterbugs paddling their way across the surface. The perimeter of the pool was marked by a few feet of concrete and a chain-link fence.

The first night that summer Edwin, Marti, and I all jumped into the pool. I don't remember where Derek and Casey were, but it was always like that, Derek-and-Casey somewhere without me-Edwin-Marti. There was a full moon that night and we could see as well as if there had been lights overhead. Edwin made dozens of cannonballs, his shouts breaking the sounds of crickets and frogs chirping around us.

We swam until Marti misjudged her jump and ended up with a large cut on her knee. The blood spread into the water in thin, black ribbons. My childhood fear of sharks emerging from the deep end of the pool sprang out of the past. I lifted myself onto the concrete and found Marti a towel, then stood dripping in the humid air with an eye on the murky water at the other end. But the pool was still.

The three of us lay side by side on the concrete, staring up at the clear spread of stars. Edwin breathed deeply; Marti's breath fluttered in and out of her like a bird chirping. If I had been younger, I would have reached out to hold both their hands, but I was attempting to assert my individuality, to somehow blunt the strange ache of being sixteen.

Edwin broke the silence. "We're a team, right guys?"

"You mean, like a crime fighting trio?" I scoffed. Edwin laughed.

"Sure. But, I mean . . ." He sat up, looking down at the two of us, his face strangely outlined in the moonlight. "I mean. We're a team." He trailed off. Insecurity didn't sit well on Edwin, who had come into his own once Derek went to college. I think that people would pick Edwin as the better of the two, all things considered—Edwin was the rare younger brother who learned from his older brother's mistakes. And Derek's big mistake was discontentment, which Edwin conquered early.

"Yeah, sure. Nerd." I laughed, punching his knee. Marti giggled. We lay there for hours, until George's voice called across the field, worried.

 

* * *

 

 

The next day I found myself in the passenger seat of Derek's car. We drove back through the windy roads to the small convenience store at the intersection of the nearest main road. Derek was silent, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel.

After loading up on junk food and paper products, Derek started up his truck again and we drove. I didn't say anything when we missed the turn to the cabins. Derek was focused on some goal I couldn't see. He drove to the far side of the lake and turned off the truck.

"You drink yet?" he asked. I nodded without thinking.

The truth was that I wanted Derek at least as badly as Casey did. Derek inspired in me a complicated mixture of a little sister vying for an older brother's approval and a young girl thrilled at the idea of throwing herself headlong into a disaster. This was why I never held Casey's choices against her: given the chance, I could have been twice as selfish as she.

I didn't realize my adoration of Derek until I was much older. As he handed me a beer, my stomach turned over in what I thought was hatred, or maybe just discomfort. He grinned at me, eyes slightly wild, all of him beautiful. I drank even though the alcohol slid bitterly down my throat.

"How can you stand coming up here every year?" he asked. With his car turned off, the heat lay over us like a blanket.

"It's not so bad," I said. "Besides, I live by the philosophy that you can't make everything perfect. Might as well enjoy what you have."

I sounded very grown-up to my ears. I thought I'd found the secret to contentment, but really I was building very large walls against disappointment. High school wasn't what I'd expected—I wasn't as beautiful as Casey or as popular as Edwin. I was still angry at my father. Deep down, I suspected that I was just as much a disappointment to everyone else.

Derek make a sound of acknowledgement in his throat. I followed his gaze out to the lake, looking at whatever it was he had found out there. He started his truck.

"Tell that to your sister," he said.

It was the only acknowledgement of their relationship that he ever made to me.

After his car accident I went to visit him in the hospital, because I was the only sibling close enough to drive. That he survived was truly miraculous. The driver was dead. Derek had a long cut down his cheek and some bruises on his arms, but otherwise he was fine. He looked at me but didn't seem to see me for a minute. When he did, there was a depth to his eyes that I couldn't really understand, anger and sadness all mixed up inside. He was still beautiful, still Derek, but unreachable.

"You had it right, that day at the lake," he said, brow furrowed. "You can't have everything you want. Maybe you shouldn't even want it."

"Derek," I said, resting my hand over his, "I was just a kid. Kids say dumb things."

He looked through me again. Pulled his hand away from mine.

For a few years I received a postcard every so often. Thailand. Australia. India. South Africa. I followed his journeys on the other side of the globe, storing the postcards in an old shoebox in the top of my closet, until he stopped bothering to send them at all.

 

* * *

 

Out in the lake, just too far to easily swim to, was a large rock Casey and I called "the island." As soon as we were old enough to use the canoe by ourselves, we would paddle out there and spend hours sunning ourselves, pretending to be mermaids or pirates or sea turtles in turn.

I asked Casey one morning that summer if she wanted to come on the picnic Edwin and I had planned. She crinkled her nose, not bothering to look up from her book.

"The island is covered in bird poo," she said. I hesitated for a moment before giving up on her.

I knew Casey wouldn't come to the island. The last time she'd been out there was the last summer our father had joined us at the lake. That summer is blotted out in my memory, like sudden static on the radio. Except for the night Casey and I snuck out of the cabin and took one of the canoes to the island, each of us with a flower Casey promised would grant us wishes.

"I wish," she'd said, trying to sound stronger than any child needed to be, "that Mom and Dad would stop fighting." She dropped the flower into the black water. It bobbed on the surface for a few minutes, then drifted away.

The next summer, they were divorced.

Derek did come on our picnic, though. Edwin and I took one canoe and Derek and Marti the other. It was late afternoon and the rock had been warmed in the sun. We stretched out and took turns throwing bread at the ducks who swam near, laughing at their squawks. I probably made a speech about disturbing a natural environment, but Marti was so gleeful that I let it go.

I fell asleep and when I woke, the sun was low in the sky. Marti was curled toward me, snoring. I didn't sit up. Derek and Edwin sat next to me, talking softly, their conversation punctuated by stifled laughs. It was like they'd just discovered what a strange and wonderful thing it is to have a brother. I let the sound of their voices wash over me, unwilling to stir.

 

* * *

 

I loved George better than my own father—not more, but better. That summer, and every summer we spent at the lake, he and I would be the first to wake up and we'd sit on the large porch of the parents' cabin, drinking coffee. George was reliable. He hadn't forgotten what it was like to be young, either.

"You'll figure it out, Lizzie," he said often with his goofy smile. "Don't worry. All you need is a little perspective."

One morning we sat in the early, soft light. Derek and Casey were sitting down at the dock, too far to be clearly visible but still recognizably themselves. "It's good to see them getting along," George said, gesturing with his coffee mug. There was a slight frown on his face.

On some level, my mom and George must have known. Then again, maybe not. George and my mom were pleasant, contented people who on their first shots at marriage had unwisely married restless, ambitious people. I once heard Derek say admiringly that his mother traveled across Europe for a year before she bothered with college—his way of trying to postpone his own college attendance. My father, for his part, had gone to an Ivy League school and never mentally left it.

It's that pleasantness that makes me think they didn't know. For them, blending a family involved little more than positive attitudes and gentle encouragement, because they didn't understand that all their children took after their exes more than the two of them. We were a restless, ambitious house—Derek and Casey most of all.

Around the time of Casey's wedding my mom went on a rampage. "He's her brother, he should be here!" she said. Derek had all of us McDonalds wrapped around his finger.

"Mom," I said, staring at her, "you can't really expect them to be friends."

Something like recognition crossed her face. For a second, I thought it would all be out in the open—confirmed, buried, and forgotten. "No, I guess not," she said softly. Then she shook her head and continued where she had left off, demanding that we all be as pleasant and content as she was.

 

* * *

 

I visited Marti in Seoul shortly after my devastating break-up with a guy who'd promised to marry me. A family trait, I guess, going off to see the world to self-medicate your heartache. The vibrant city numbed my nerves, the language passed over me, and Marti was a stranger. The longer I was there, the more certain I became that I hardly knew her. I hardly knew Casey, either, but Casey was always an equation that never quite added up. Marti had firmly held her role as little sister until I saw her without us. She adapted to this foreign country like she'd been preparing for it for years. Maybe she had; how could I know?

While I was there she asked, offhandedly, "How long were Derek and Casey together?"

I froze. It was the only time anyone had ever stated it outright. If I had vocalized it, I would have said it differently—how long were they messing around, how long were they being idiots, how long were they playing with fire—but Marti stated it simply, like a fact everyone knew about.

"I don't know," I said. "I never asked."

She nodded. "Not exactly the kind of thing you bring up over dinner, eh?" she grinned.

It was a half-truth. I knew instinctively that Casey and Derek had been together for years, right up until she got married. A month before her wedding she asked me to meet her at the reception hall she'd booked. I found her in the bathroom, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. She wasn't crying. Her body bristled with silent resolve, steeled against tears. When I laid a hand on her shoulder, she jerked away.

"You don't have to get married, Casey," I said.

She blinked at her reflection. "No, I do." She raked her hair away from her face. "I do."

 

* * *

 

Every night at the lake we would gather in our parents' cabin to play board games. My mom hung bug repellant from the ceiling, giving the room an acrid scent. Nighttime was a chorus of crickets and our laughter.

One night stands out against the rest. Casey and Derek were in the cabin's small kitchen, arguing in restrained voices. My mom was nervous and kept glancing at the door. Edwin looked at me and rolled his eyes.

Then Casey started screaming obscenities I didn't realize she knew. She fled the cabin and disappeared in the dark. Derek didn't leave the kitchen. My mom's face drained of color. The baby started crying. She stood up to hush it and George joined her in the corner of the room, talking in low voices that we pretended not to overhear.

"They'll work it out, Nora," George said. His voice dropped too low for us to hear.

"—totally inappropriate—" my mom hissed. I could only hear snatches of what she said. "—the kids shouldn't hear that kind of—don't know what's gotten into her—"

This was close to the end of the summer. The next summer, Casey didn't come to the lake.

I left the cabin and tracked Casey down by the lakeside. She huddled on the sand, knees to her chest, tears shining in the moonlight. I sat down next to her, sliding my arm across her shoulders.

"It's my fault," she said softly. She shook her head like she was trying to figure something out. "Always my fault."

I gave her a speech on how she shouldn't take on others guilt. She nodded, dumbly, not listening to what I was saying. I lapsed into silence.

"I gotta tell you something, Liz," she said after a long time. "I'm getting out of here. I'm going places. No matter what Derek says—no, _especially_ because of what Derek says. If I want to live in a fairy tale, then damn it, I will." She stood and disappeared down the beach. I sat still, watching her defiant stride until she was hidden by a cluster of trees.

I heard someone behind me. Turning, I saw Edwin looking in the direction Casey had gone.

"She'll be okay," he said. "Let it go. We need you to make the Pictionary teams even."

I returned to the warm light of the cabin, my mind fixed on Casey, a dark figure against the gray strip of beach.

 

* * *

 

To celebrate the last week of summer, Mom left the baby with my grandmother and the seven of us piled into a borrowed, shabby motorboat. The vast lake was nearly empty.

"Remember when we thought there was a sea monster in here?" I asked Casey. She smiled with her lips pressed together, one hand holding a floppy hat on her head.

"Who says there isn't?" Edwin asked, grinning. Derek and George both laughed. Marti looked terrified.

We took turns on the inner tube. George was a surprisingly competent driver, sending us high into the air on each turn. Every time Derek climbed back into the boat, he threatened to throw Casey overboard, until finally he did just that. She yelled out his name, two clear syllables floating across the water, but she was smiling. She pulled herself gracefully back onto the boat, her clothes dripping wet, making it a point to wring them out on Derek's head.

This is how I remember us best—the seven of us that evening on the lake, the sunset burning behind us, our laughter loud and long. I felt perfectly happy, certain that nothing could break the spell lying over us, that our happiness was the rule and not the exception.

Years later I reminisced on that night with Edwin while holding his daughter in my lap. It was another humid, warm evening, though we sat on the porch of Edwin's respectable two-story house instead of the unfinished boards of our parents' cabin. Edwin's brow furrowed.

"You can't expect everything to just stay the same, Lizzie," he said. I resented Edwin for being content, for grabbing hold of the kind of life that had always eluded me. He tilted his head to the side, demanding that I meet his eyes. "Come on, Lizzie. We all make our own choices. Families drift apart, sometimes. It happens."

I held tightly to the warm body of my niece. She blew spit bubbles and laughed at herself. "But you remember it?" I asked.

He smiled. "It was a good night, yeah." His smile changed a little as he met my eyes again. "But good things don't stay good if you never let them change."

 

* * *

 

On the last night of the summer I left the large convocation hall, letting the door bang behind me. Every year the cabin community held a party to wish each other well until the next year. It was another sticky night, and I needed to change into less constricting clothes. The sky was washed with purple and blue, a few stars peeking through the darkest strip of sky. The air smelled of a thunderstorm. It had been a dry summer and the lake was low. A few drops of rain hit just as I approached the cabin.

I yanked open the screen door and froze. They stood in the very center of the cabin, locked in each other's arms. My heart pounded. I didn't believe what I saw, her hands fisted in his shirt, his mouth pressed against hers. There built in me a sudden fear, a trembling down to my very core. Nothing was what I had thought. Casey ripped herself away from him and they stood, helpless, facing me. Casey breathed out my name. I turned and ran.

She caught up with me just as I reached the beach. Fat drops spotted the sand, dark as bullet holes. I couldn't look at her.

"Lizzie," she said, grabbing my arm. Her thumb dug into my skin. "Lizzie. Lizzie, you won't tell. You won't tell." I finally looked at her. Her eyes were wide with terror. "You won't tell."

I shook my head blindly. "No," I said, promising myself more than her. I grabbed her hand encircling my arm and peeled it away, holding it tightly enough to feel the bones of her hands. We stared each other down, breathing in the scent of a storm.

I took a breath and let go of her hand. "No, I won't tell."

 

* * *

 

_end._


End file.
